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Paul Gibbs is Release Lead for BP 3.0

Paul (twitter) is a BuddyPress Lead Developer, Senior WordPress Engineer at Human Made, master of memes extraordinaire, and lives in the UK. His latest project is WordHat, a Behat extension. When not working, Paul enjoys playing video and board games, and luxury travel. You can also find him at byotos.com and at github.com.

Following are a few of his plans for this dev cycle.

Nouveau Template Pack

The items listed below need to be resolved before we ship bp-nouveau and BP 3.0:
1. Review all the superglobals and JSON handlers and nonces, for security.
2. Review all i18n strings.
3. Review of custom SQL.

BuddyPress.org Redesign

Paul is also reviving the development of the site’s redesign. If you’d like to participate, get in contact with Paul on our Slack. The current code is at https://gitlab.com/paulgibbs/bporg and there’s a staging site at http://dev-bporg.pantheonsite.io

Dev Chats

In lieu of the weekly dev chats in Slack, Paul would be using this site for async contribution updates and explore other avenues for developer chats like video hangouts, etc. Expect an announcement soon.

Schedule of Release

BP 3.0 is expected to be released early in the first quarter of 2018. We won’t be following the 3- to 4-month scheduling as in the past BuddyPress releases. BP 3.0 will be a focused release, specifically introducing the new Nouveau template pack along with other bug fixes and enhancements along the way.

BuddyPress Case Studies

Thanks to all who have shared their BuddyPress use cases with the community! The list of published articles this year are available in the BuddyPress Codex for your reference. If you’re interested in sharing your own BuddyPress use case, fill up this form and we’ll get back to you ASAP.

bp-nouveau

@hnla has committed styling updates, concentrated on some issue areas with what’s new update form and user screens, in particular messaging and the bulk action filters & search form elements, hacking away at the Backbone templates to bring the markup into line with the general selector and search form visual styles & updating the JS show/hide events to work with classes rather than jQuery .hide().

@hnla: “The what’s new form could still do with some further attention on the general show/hide nature of its control actions, I removed some earlier styles & tidied up the new autocomplete input where `post in groups` is selected, however we currently have no onBlur event to hide the controls so anyone that fancies delving into backbone could help out looking at what we could do to add some fun to the what’s new form. At this stage We have clean code supporting this feature, pretty much a blank canvas for playing around with effects that might look good rather than our rather staid `onfocus` open.”

At this stage we need more devs taking tickets/project cards and moving into In Progress column.

Trac Tickets

Include BP Edit Group Slug into the core (#6014) @dcavins has committed patch to trunk.

Messages: member page messages are queried for the loggedin user (#7096) @dcavins has refreshed patch. @r-a-y and @Offereins have provided feedback.

Remove/Replace `title` attributes with Tooltips usable in all devices (#7188) @mercime has examples in ticket. The choice was the second example, though @dcavins is making a case for the third example.

Only load component action and screen code when we’re on the component’s page (#7218) @r-a-y has patch.

Use JOIN rather than Subquery on user search (#7442) @brandonliles has patch. Needs dev feedback.

BuddyPress Case Studies

Thanks to all who have shared their BuddyPress use cases with the community! The growing list of published articles are available in the BuddyPress Codex for your reference. If you’re interested in sharing your own BuddyPress use case, fill up this form and we’ll get back to you ASAP.

When user is not logged, if he/she clicks email link to view new messages gets 404 page when should get login page (#7349) @r-a-y has committed fixes for redirection issues and improving UX. Has refreshed patch after commits. Dev feedback requested.

Use stylelint to lint SCSS & CSS replacing Ruby Gem `scss_lint` (#7028) @hnla follows up with @netweb. We need to get this in early in dev cycle to test.

BP_PHPMailer needs to set the `Date` header (#7509) @r-a-y has committed fix to trunk.

Test depends on PHP EXIF support; should fail more gracefully when absent (#7432) @r-a-y has committed fix to trunk.

{{user.site_url}} token not using HTTPS when site is on SSL (#7508) @r-a-y has committed fix to trunk.

BP Use Cases from BP Developers/Site Builders

@mercime announced that guest posts from BP Developers/Site Builders will be published soon at BuddyPress.org. The first batch of informative and interesting case studies have been submitted by developers who signed up during the BuddyPress 2016 Survey.

bp-nouveau template pack

@hnla reported on the bug and a11y fixes made on bp-nouveau to date. He has added a temporary Gruntfile.js, primarily for compiling and linting Sass files, as well as other project-specific configuration files. @mercime will be posting solutions in codepen for removing placeholders from form controls.

BP REST API

@rayisme noted, “We’ll definitely have the /members endpoint ready by the time BP 2.9 is done, but probably will not be merged into core. The BP REST API will stay as a plugin for at least the next few release cycles until things have been fleshed out, similar to how the WP REST API was a plugin for awhile.”

Deprecate the BuddyPress functions for bbPress 1.x forums (#6851) @johnjamesjacoby introduced a motion to “remove bp-forums pretty much completely, or relegate it to its own compatibility plugin like we did Wire and Status.”@boonebgorges concurred with the compat plugin route and noted, “I’d like to stage it over maybe two releases, with large warnings in the interim release if you are running legacy forums. Maybe even block upgrade to the removing-version if we detect you are running it (like we did with the 5.3 requirement). How many of them will upgrade to BP 3.0 or 3.1, that’s another question. But it’s easy enough for us to create barriers to white screens, so we should do so.” @johnjamesjacoby: “Making this release ideal for the warning. I think the 3.0.0 release is a nice round number to cut the old legacy forum cord, too.” @boonebgorges: “So admin notices + upgrade-blocks for 2.9, and maybe some logic in 3.0 that prevents loading the full plugin if the compat plugin is not found. Someone will need to wrangle all of the necessary steps, including preparing and releasing the compat plugin.”@johnjamesjacoby has volunteered for the tasks, “the pleasure of the pain will all be mine.”

Create administration sections for every component that’s currently lacking an interface

@johnjamesjacoby: Friends, Messages, and Notifications basically. “Preferably, I’d like to also stagger the work on those, so the expectation isn’t to have a 100% fully covered and integrated interface that covers all users and use-cases. Similar to Groups Admin (how you can’t create a new group from within wp-admin). I really also want a live-chat style Messages UI while you’re in wp-admin”@boonebgorges: “Big +1 to more admin coverage, though we should think carefully about whether each of these BP components needs its own top-level item. (Friends may be properly a property of Users, rather than its own thing, or whatever).”@johnjamesjacoby: “Right now, all of BuddyPress makes theme-side websites better, and that’s awesome, and it should, and always will. But once you enter wp-admin, BuddyPress doesn’t actually help WordPress itself be a better piece of software for managing users, community content, etc. We don’t need to talk about all of the detail-work right now, but I wanted to drop that vision in here now, so everyone has an idea of what I’m thinking, and we can maybe try to hit that vision hard in 3.0 and beyond. Hopefully 2.9 and Nouveau and everything else will keep the traditional BuddyPress installation type satisfied for a few years, enough time to work on REST API, wp-admin integration, maybe some GraphQL if we like that, etc.”

BP Theme Compatibility

A basic visualization of the BuddyPress Theme Compat is now available for bp-templates/bp-legacy. Use Ctl/Cmd +/- to zoom in/out, scroll up/down or click + drag right/left to navigate. Visualizations for bbPress Theme Compat and the upcoming bp-nouveau template pack are also in the works.

BP 2.9 Scoping/Wishlist

bp-nouveau Template Pack

@hnla, 2.9 Release Lead, will focus on getting bp-nouveau ready for integration into core this dev cycle. He noted, “bp-nouveau represents a clean break from those older templates, clean markup, new styles new file structure with include files and function files managing components and affords us the opportunity to build a better BP than ever before.”

@hnla encouraged all core devs to have a local install running the plugin version and to reconvene at next meeting for a renewed focus & to air any concerns. He has added the following guides to the project for all who want to contribute:

The major steps to get this project for inclusion are pretty much covered by the milestones but broadly fall into:
1. Core integration: adding the switching mechanism to core admin settings, working out the logic for default selection & some means of registering packs in use.
2. Testing the process for stylesheet building and testing the core files merged to trunk along with possible gruntfile adjustments required.
3. Testing of components by device( mobile/ desktop & browser versions) and testing.
4. Testing Accessibility.

@boonebgorges: “I share Hugo’s belief that the time has come to move beyond bp-legacy, and I think that a new set of templates is critical for the future of the project. I’m going to be working with Hugo over the next few weeks to develop some materials that’ll introduce the rest of the team to the workings of bp-nouveau, as well as more details on a plan for moving toward merge, with the idea of soliciting as much energy and contribution from the broader team as possible.” He will help to get bp-nouveau in for 2.9.

@mercime noted that per her initial a11y audit of bp-nouveau (last year), there were items which needed to be fixed in core first. Edit – Most items have been fixed, there are only a few remaining a11y issues which will affect template pack left in core.

@modemlooper likes the Template Pack UI in admin which he thinks will open up lots of customization … spawning child themes of bp-nouveau.

@dcavins volunteered to help with bp-nouveau. @hnla mentioned his concerns with group creation wanted it more a one step process that we could then paginate if we wanted to but accessing certain meta is hard such as group ID at some points where you need it. @dcavins: “I also have some feelings about group creation. (Like change it to one step then redirect to the new group to setup.)”

@boonebgorges will be working on a summary document about bp-nouveau’s status plus user-facing and developer-oriented features over the next week or so.

BP REST API

@rayisme would like to see where we’re currently at and what we can accomplish in this dev cycle. @boonebgorges responded, “it needs someone to take the lead – there was some initial work done on the Members endpoint but it needs to be seen through.”

BuddyPress.org Redesign

@rayisme: “There are elements I like about both. modemlooper’s orange header + iconfont section and karmatosed’s “Are you a user / developer” section. At first, I didn’t like the orange header, but I like that it’s a little in-your-face.”

@modemlooper‘s design was à la https://jetpack.com/ and said, “the design reboot started because I thought the homepage lacked alot of marketing points.” @karmatosed thought that doing original design is good. She’s happy to noodle some more.

@johnjamesjacoby: “Naturally, I have opinions, but mostly I really want all of y’all to feel like these themes are yours to create/enjoy also. It seems like everyone is still in the “I wonder what this or that might look or feel like” which is totally fine. No rush, no agenda, and if something naturally suddenly clicks into the place, we should head that direction.”

Dev Chat Schedule

This is a friendly reminder that starting Wednesday, March 29, dev chat at the #buddypress channel on Slack.com will be at 19:00 UTC through the end of Daylight Savings Time for both U.S. and Europe.

BuddyPress 2.9 Schedule

@hnla, BP 2.9 Release Lead, looks forward to discussing project scope/focus/tasks with the team on March 22.

Dev Chat Schedule

Daylight Savings Time for the United States started Sunday, March 12, while DST in Europe will begin on March 26. In keeping with schedule adjustments from previous years, following is the schedule of our dev chat till further notice:

BuddyPress.org Redesign

The redesign of BuddyPress.org has been discussed many times over a number of years.

Feb. 22: @modemlooper initiated discussion this year about BuddyPress.org colors, adding a showcase page, work on the product side, among other things. He also posted some screenshots on that day and following days to ask for feedback.